


In the Night

by Pigeonsplotinsecrecy



Series: Filling Out the Episodes [3]
Category: 9-1-1: Lone Star (TV 2020)
Genre: Anxiety, Episode: s02e03 tag, Worry, insominia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-07
Updated: 2021-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-12 22:22:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29267937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pigeonsplotinsecrecy/pseuds/Pigeonsplotinsecrecy
Summary: The gravity of what happened to Owen catches up with T.K.
Relationships: Carlos Reyes/TK Strand
Series: Filling Out the Episodes [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2139738
Comments: 11
Kudos: 94





	In the Night

T.K. doesn’t know when things when wrong— when the relief of saving his father and getting home from San Angelo turned into a deep, unshakeable fear, but it wasn’t until he’d gotten back to Austin and was tucked next to Carlos in bed that his feelings settled after being shaken for days. Carlos has gone to sleep, and the minute T.K. felt Carlos’ breathing even out, negative feelings began to emerge like they were sinking from the air above and falling into his consciousness with a thud. He rolls away from Carlos, suddenly feeling hot and tight-chested. He thinks of smoke in the air and his dad lost somewhere in it, and he can’t get the thought off his mind that somewhere in that smoke there was a disaster waiting to happen. His lungs are encumbered by the pollution of late-night thought.

He can't stay in bed any longer, so he drags his feet over the side and creeps out of bed, trying to be as lightfooted as a man of his size can be. He thinks he's pretty good at it. He's had lots of practice from his teenage years when he never stayed home for too long, but T.K.'s parents didn't want to notice. They didn't want to admit that something was seriously wrong with their son. Carlos is harder for T.K. to fool, which can be both a blessing and a curse. He creeps out of the room and closes the door behind him, and heads down the steps. They creak under his feet because stairs always seem to scream your secrets loudest when you want them to stay quiet.

T.K.'s eyes are heavy with the want of sleep, so he boils water and pours in instant coffee beads that Carlos keeps for when he makes coffee ice cream. The instant coffee is harsh and unnuanced, but it does the trick without all the fuss. The warmth of the coffee eases some of the coldness in his body, but it only makes his thoughts faster and more frantic. Maybe that's what he needs— to rush all these fears out of his body so that they'll leave him alone.

With the hot drink in his hand, T.K. sits in his favorite chair, and it's the one that he and Carlos always fight over— black leather with button tufts. It doesn't look that comfortable, but it's oddly just the right shape and size for T.K.'s body. It's sleek, but the more T.K. sits in it, the cozier it feels.

He wants all his thoughts to go away, but they've chased him to a corner, and now, there's no escaping them. They're noisy and they fight one another because the unsettled feeling that T.K. grew up knowing means that frantic is his natural state and he needs unnatural means to numb all the problems he's never learned to deal with. He thinks of his dad, and a lump forms in his throat as he thinks about how many times they've come close to death only to escape it by sheer luck.

The thoughts are floating around T.K.'s head like leaves in the wind when T.K. feels a weight over his shoulder, and the leaves drop from where they were hanging. He looks up to see Carlos leaning over from behind the chair. “Hey, what’s wrong?” Carlos asks, his voice a warm, breathy whisper, and the vibrations counteract the unsteadiness T.K. feels. “Are you hurt?”

T.K. takes one of the arms draped around him, and lets his hand fall into Carlos'. He pulls Carlos to the front of the chair so they're looking face to face. "I’m okay, babe," T.K. promises. "I just couldn't sleep."

"Is that coffee?" Carlos asks, sitting on the tiny ottoman that he's pulled close so that it’s almost touching the chair. He doesn't even joke that T.K.'s in _his_ chair. He takes the cup from T.K.'s hand, and for a second, T.K. thinks Carlos is going to drink it, but he reaches over to put it on the coffee table instead.

"Instant, so it sucks."

Carlos scrunches his nose. "You'll never get to sleep with that sludge in your system."

T.K.winds his hand around the back of Carlos’ neck, pulling himself towards the edge of the chair so he's closer to Carlos. “You should be in bed. You have work tomorrow.” The last thing T.K. wants is for Carlos to go to work tired. If something happened, he’d always wonder if it was because Carlos hadn’t gotten enough sleep and it was his fault.

“I worried when I woke up with a blanket still on," Carlos rubs a hand over T.K.'s back where the muscles are most taut.

T.K. laughs. “I bet you didn’t miss that when I was gone.”

“Eh, I get too hot, anyway.”

“Oh, yeah, I know. You're Carlos Reyes, the hottest man alive.”

There's a glimmer in Carlos' eyes somewhere past the disquiet. “Stroking my ego won’t get you out of a conversation, T.K.”

“You can’t fault me for trying," T.K. says. "I’m not even sure I know what’s wrong. Nothing should be wrong. Everything turned out okay. I was fine."

"But now you're drinking instant coffee when you could be stealing all my blankets."

T.K. doesn't even keep the blanket on half the time; he throws it off both of them and onto the floor. "That's temperature control, baby. We've been over this. I've got to keep you from overheating."

"I have a thermostat for that."

"A man and his modern inventions.""I'm sure there's a reason you're not in bed?"

" I couldn't sleep. I thought a change of scenery would help. It doesn't help."

"Want to talk about it?" He does want to talk about it, but the words are still abstract and muddled in his head, and he doesn't know how to share them.

T.K. shrugs, 'I don't know if it will help. My brain is being dumb."

Carlos takes T.K.'s hands in his. "It can't hurt to try."

Carlos has a way of pushing the truth out of T.K. in a way that's firm and gentle all at once, but T.K. isn’t sure that he can say the words, not when he fears them so much. “Every time something bad happens, coming out of it is defying the odds.” T.K. swallows. "We can't keep defying the odds. We can't keep getting lucky."

"I don't know much about odds, but I wouldn't call what you're doing getting lucky. You're getting unlucky and then finding your way out of it. Bad things happen, but it's your willingness to go to the extreme for other people that keeps you all surviving."

“He could have died,” T.K.'s voice is small.

Carlos pulls T.K. closer, and T.K.'s just barely in the chair and is half on the ottoman in the space between Carlos' legs. "But he's okay now," Carlos reminds T.K.

"One day he won't be." It's not something Carlos can deny because that's how life works. One day people aren't okay. They're gone too quickly. "People keep dying," and he's falling into existential territory that makes him feel even more hopeless, "and they're just going to keep dying." He puts his head on Carlos' shoulder so he's looking down at the floor. "I don't want to live like that with the constant fear that my whole life is going to be flipped on its head in just one moment. That everything that means anything to me will be taken."

"I know, it sucks," and T.K.'s relieved that Carlos doesn't try to tell him that it will be okay. He doesn't make T.K. feel stupid for being afraid. "I'm scared too. Every time you're putting yourself in danger, I wonder if you won't get out. Even when you aren't in danger, I still worry sometimes because shit happens, and it doesn’t' make sense. It just happens."

"How do you sleep knowing that? How do you push those thoughts aside and enjoy life?" T.K. knows there's no easy answer to that question. There will always be times when he feels that same frantic, claustrophobic feeling.

"I don't know," Carlos answers, pressing his lips against T.K.'s temple. "I guess you just take comfort in the things you do have, including the memories of what you don't have anymore."

T.K. gives a tense laugh. "That easy, huh?" T.K. knows he'll feel better in a few days. When he's processed everything that had happened, but until that happens, he holds Carlos close, and he lets Carlos pull him back to bed because Carlos needs his rest. T.K.'s thoughts keep him up for a while longer, but they don't have the same potency the longer they linger. He knows that if he can close his eyes just long enough that the tiredness and sadness will take over. He'll fall asleep and he'll wake up feeling better because mornings always felt a little better after a sad, scary night. T.K. listens to Carlos' evened-out breathing, and he matches his own breathing to his lover's. He feels himself calm, and eventually, he drifts off to sleep, even with the worries and instant coffee still in his system.


End file.
